


What Do I Get?

by BasicBathsheba



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dev POV, Existential Angst, FIFA, M/M, deNiall, slightly meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 16:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18968962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicBathsheba/pseuds/BasicBathsheba
Summary: “This is your life, mate,” Niall says quietly. “Start treating yourself like the main fucking character.”





	What Do I Get?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tbazzsnow (Artescapri)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artescapri/gifts).



> HAPPYYYY BIRTHDAYYYY TBAZZ! This fic is for you, my humble offering on your birthday. Thank you for all the beta reading, brain storming, conversations and friendship! In honour of our joint love of Dev and Niall, I offer you this deep dive into Dev’s brain.  
> [i did in fact write this on the plane while sitting between two old men]

 

** DEV **

When we were fifteen, my cousin told me I was a background character in his life.

“I’m the villain in this story, clearly,” Baz drawled while we were spread out on the floor of my bedroom, playing FIFA. I was losing really badly, but his face was near a pair of my dirty pants and he hadn’t realised it, and that felt like justice.

“Then what am I?” I’d asked, nearly crushing my controller as I tried to get control of the tiny football on the television screen.

“You’re a minion. One of those secondary background characters.”

His player stole my ball and took it down the digital field and sunk a perfect goal. 

I pretended I had to do chores after that, and disappeared outside to sit on the wall of the back pasture and not be around him.

I spent years trying to forget about it. The background character thing. Not the FIFA thing. 

That’s just Baz. That’s classic Baz with his too long name and obsession with black and his determination to carve himself out as the bad guy. He’d assigned himself a role in whatever grand adventure was happening in his head, and he’d categorised everyone else accordingly.

Niall always tells me not to let it get to me. That of course Baz thinks that way. He lived with Snow. The kid was a walking story book disaster, so of course Baz got sucked into it. It was his entire life; every night in his dorm was some epic grudge match. He never got a chance to sit around and listen to music with his roommate or move aside furniture to carve stupid things into the wall or share snacks or do normal things. He never got to just be a kid, Niall said.

I didn’t tell Niall that Baz said he was a tertiary character at best.

I don’t know if he would have known what tertiary meant. I had to look it up, which just made me even angrier.

What fucking fifteen year old uses the word tertiary?

 

~•~

 

I guess it’s just that being related to the arch nemesis of the saviour of the world means that your problems seem pretty stupid. 

At least, according to Baz. When I was failing Greek, all he said was “study harder.” He’s great at Greek. He could have helped me, but he was stalking around, looking like a twat where Snow could see him, and he didn’t have time to help I guess.

Niall did. Even though Niall is actually worse at Greek than I am, he cared. We cleared a wall of our room and made a huge study board with our vocab words and declensions. He used to bring flash cards and drill me whenever Baz conned us into following Snow around.

Both of us scraped C’s. Tertiary grades.

 

~•~

 

Sometimes it’s like every big moment of my life is attached to some equally shitty thing that Baz and Snow did. My first kiss? Got broken up by the fucking Chimera. Niall came running out of the Wood all wild eyed and literally dragged me away from where I’d been making out with Mellie Gregor. 

“Time to go, time to go,” he’d yelled, grabbing my arm. “Hey Mellie, nice to see you, we need to get the fuck out of here.”

Mellie hadn’t been that understanding the next day when she found out that Baz was the one who set the Chimera loose.

“But I didn’t do it!” I’d argued, outraged. She just shook her head. She didn’t care.

“You’re one of his minions,” she’d said. “I just don’t want to get dragged into all that, sorry.”

That night Niall gifted me a cup of tea and his feigned obliviousness while I huddled under my blanket and definitely did not cry.

 

~•~

 

That’s not to say that I hate Baz. I don’t. I really don’t. He’s my cousin and the first friend I ever had, and even if I want to kill him sometimes, I’m stuck with him for life. So no, I don’t hate him. 

Niall does, though. Sometimes.

It’s because they aren’t related, I think. The Grimms are nowhere as weird as the Pitches, but we still have that deep Old Family loyalty shit going on. Niall isn’t from an Old Family. He’s just from a family. They’re pretty passive about this whole thing, and the only reason he got sucked into this drama is because the Crucible paired us up first year. So I guess he kind of got dragged into all of this because of me.

It’s weird, because sometimes I think he and Baz are better friends than Baz and I are. He’ll actually go over to Baz’s house just to hang out and eat food. I don’t do that. Mostly because it’s a drive, but also because the place freaks me out and Uncle Malcolm is kind of weird. My dad and I think he’s way too uptight.

But just when I’ll start feeling like the odd man out in my friend group, Niall will go absolutely nutters and curse Baz into the grave. I kind of love it when he gets pissy like that.

“Baz is going to get us bloody killed,” he used to mutter every time we dragged ourselves out of a bog or a pit or were washing smoke out of our hair after Snow had gone off. “I’m not fucking dying for him.”

He had a point. But what were we going to do? This was the story we were following: this was our role.

 

~•~

 

Seventh year, Niall tried to take himself out of the story.

“I really need to focus on school,” he’d said one night in our room. We’d eaten about six bags of crisps each and I thought I was going to vomit, and it made it really hard to take what he was saying seriously because my world was like a haze of salt n vinegar nausea. 

“I mean it,” he said. “I dunno if I’ll get into a good uni at this rate. I need to get my shit together, especially with everything happening.”

I knew what he meant by everything. Eighth year coming up, the tensions getting tenser. The war we’d grown up hearing about was maybe not so bullshit as it sounded. 

I was with Baz, whatever came. I knew that. I’m always with him. 

But Niall wasn’t.

“I’m just saying, even if this happens and Snow ends up blowing everyone up, the Normals will still be there and doing their things,” he’d said. “I just want to make sure that if my magical job opportunities dry up, I can still fall back on like, banking or something.”

“But you can’t do maths,” I’d argued.

He’d stared at me, so entirely genuine and steady, his brown eyes creased and his fuzzy auburn hair sticking up.

“That’s why I’m trying to learn, Dev.”

 

~•~

 

I thought Niall had the right of it. Make a contingency plan. Keep an escape route open. We spent half the summer after seventh year holed up in my room making plans. If the war came and shit when south, we were bailing. We charted a route to his gran’s in Ireland. We looked into AirBnbs in America. We stuffed cash away and kept a bag of water and granola in the boot of my car.

We included Baz in these plans, even if we didn’t tell him. We weren’t going to leave him behind to deal with the mess or get himself killed. We’d even practised knock out spells, just in case we had to grab Baz and run. 

I was better at those than maths. 

We had everything planned, going into eighth year. Just in case the worst happened. We wouldn’t be caught by surprise.

 

~•~

 

Then we got caught by surprise.

When Baz didn’t show back up for the start of eighth year, Niall was positive he was doing something sketchy. 

“You sound like Snow,” I chided as we left class. We’d barely dodged the Chosen One, who had been taking every opportunity to attack us and grill us about Baz.

“Well, Snow’s not exactly wrong,” Niall muttered. “Baz is always plotting something.”

I couldn’t argue. He had a point.

 

~•~

 

But after two weeks, even Niall got concerned, and our anxieties were just feeding off of each other.

I’d been prickly and on edge since the start of term. Calling my uncle Malcolm hadn’t gotten me any answers, but that didn’t stop me from doing it regularly, and I started getting this weird, lurching feeling in my gut every time I saw his open seat at meals. It was impossible to ignore, because every time we went for tea, Niall kept grabbing three tea cups, like usual. 

I couldn’t tell if it was a force of habit, or if it was just his aggressive optimism shining through.

 

~•~

 

“We need to do something.”

It had been over a month, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Niall and I were like loose screws without Baz. We stopped talking to everyone but each other. We got snappy and defensive, we had circular conversations, and we were both thinking the same thing: despite our careful plans, the war had gotten to Baz already. His story arc had gotten called in, and all our spells and provisions and stupid ideas about running to Ireland had been useless. The war was here: we had to make our choices.

“Where do we even start?” Niall whispered back. We were in our beds, laying in the dark, waiting for sleep. We always did this: lights out just meant a temporary pause in conversation. We spent eight years holding stupid conversations in the dark that only ended when one of us passed out, and yet now that we had something real and important to talk about, the conversation was stilted and delayed.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “What would Baz do?”

“Make Snow blow something up,” Niall responded.

“Pass.”

“Thank Merlin. My old duffel coat still smells like smoke.”

I hated that I couldn’t think of anything. That I couldn’t come up with a plan. It was like I was just proving Baz right: I’m a secondary character. Henchmen and background goons don’t come up with plots.

When the villain is off screen, they stop existing.

 

~•~

 

I was relieved when Baz came back alive. Really relieved. We couldn’t show it, of course: in the eight weeks he’d been gone, Niall and I hadn’t forgotten how ruthlessly Baz would mock any hint of sign of emotion. So we just kept our heads down and acted like he’d never been missing.

That part wasn’t that hard: honestly, it was harder to pretend that he’d ever come back.

He was different. Slower. Sadder. More tired. He was keeping secrets, but not the usual kind.

“I think something fucked with him pretty badly,” Niall said. We were sitting on the grounds doing our homework, but Baz wasn’t with us. He was growing further and further away every day he was back.

“He won’t tell me what happened,” I said. “Most he said is that he got detained after we split up at the club.”

“It’s not your fault,” Niall said quickly. He gave me one of those steady stares again. His eyes were muddy blue that day. I never understood why he spelled them like that. “You didn’t know.”

He was right. It wasn’t my fault. But that didn’t stop me from feeling guilty. I was Baz’s backup. I’m here to provide aid. And instead I just felt like a Stormtrooper: constantly shooting at the wrong target and letting everything go to shit.

I tried to explain that to Niall: the background character thing, the guilt, the worry.

He smacked me in the head with my own Greek textbook.

“That’s bullshit. I thought we were taking ourselves out of this fucked up, made up story?”

I took his textbook and threw it as far as I could, until it landed in the moat.

 

~•~

 

I tried to take myself out of it. Genuinely. I went to school and did my homework and watched shitty Netflix on Niall’s illegal laptop and got in a weird fight with him about borrowing my new trainers, and I stopped thinking about Baz and Snow and their weird fucking lives, and I got on with things.

Until Christmas.

It was Niall who told me what happened, weirdly enough. I’d heard about the Humdrum attacking Pitch Manor from my dad, but it was Niall who told us about the Mage’s death.

He saw it on Pacey Bunce’s Instagram, got in his mum’s car, and drove all the way to my house. He was panting when he got there, and I think he must have run up the drive. He was so worked up he nearly punched my mum in the face when she tried to take his coat.

“The Coven is gathering at Watford because — shit, sorry, Mrs. Grimm — the Mage is dead.”

Everyone went silent. Me, mum, dad, my brother Marcus. It was Christmas. It was like all the Christmas presents my family had ever wanted, given to us in shiny wrapping, and yet none of us could process it. None of us seemed to want it.

“What?” I asked, the first one to find my voice. Niall nodded, hair on end, eyes wide. Brown that night.

“Snow killed him.”

“Snow?”

He nodded, and then swallowed, everyone hanging on his words. Whispered. I’ll never forget.

“And Baz helped.”

 

~•~

 

It’s kind of hard to explain the feeling of betrayal you get when you live your whole life being convinced you’re a supporting character in a grand adventure, and then the adventure happens off screen.

I’d spent my whole life — my whole childhood — dragged into the prelude to the Snow and Baz final grudge match. And then they went off and cancelled the fight, took out the Humdrum, killed the Mage, and apparently started dating.

I wasted my entire childhood plotting against Snow, and then Baz went and changed the fucking genre on me.

“Oh, what else were you going to do with your childhood?” he said when I told him.

I nearly pushed him into the fucking moat. I would have, if Niall hadn’t been watching.

Pretty much every day he tells me to be less angry and move forward with life. 

“This is why we made plans,” he reminds me.

But those plans didn’t involve this. I don’t know what the fuck to do with this. I don’t know what the fuck to do.

 

~•~

 

I didn’t want to go the the Leavers Ball, but Niall made me.

“We’ll spike the juice, grab some sandwiches, and then we can go fuck off to the ramparts,” he’d said. He was already dressed in a dark blue suit, and I was still laying on my bed, trying to decide whether what I was feeling was boredom or depression.

“No,” I’d said.

“It wasn’t a question.”

I’m big enough to admit that his ideas are usually pretty good. We couldn’t spike the punch, but we did steal the whole plate of sandwiches, and managed to dip out just as Snow rolled up looking weirdly well dressed.

“Just let them have their moment,” Niall muttered, grabbing my hand and dragging me out of the pavilion.

“Why do they get a moment?” I whine as we trek up the stairs to the ramparts. “Why don’t we get moments?”

Niall stops and turns, an amused expression on his face.

“Do you want us to have a moment?”

I feel my cheeks light up, and I push him down a step.

“That’s not what I meant. Fuck off.”

“If you want to dance, we can dance,” he continues. “Apparently we have to kill someone first, but there’s plenty of teachers around to off.”

My laugh echoes into the open night air as we emerge at the top, and the wind cools my face and plays with Niall’s hair. 

We sit and eat and watch the Leaver’s Ball from a distance. Niall makes fun of people’s outfits, and I just sit there and listen to him, letting his words wash over me in the dark, just like they have for eight years.

Watford is over. My schooldays are over. My childhood is gone, and I have almost nothing to show for it. 

“I dunno where to go from here,” I say when there’s a lull in Niall’s commentary. “I don’t know how to like... be me. Or like, live. What do we do?”

“We’re doing banking. That’s why we learnt how to add, isn’t it?”

“Be serious,” I tell him, elbowing him. “We’re not kids. We’re adults now, and I don’t know how to do that.”

Niall sighs and tosses the empty plate of sandwiches into the night sky like a Frisbee.

“No one knows how,” he says, turning to me. “But you can start by letting all that shit with Baz go.”

“I don’t—”

“This is your life, mate,” he says quietly. “Start treating yourself like the main fucking character.”

“Fuck, that’s deep.”

Niall shorts and gives a little shrug before knocking my elbow.

“Yeah, well, I’ve had some time to think about it.”

“So what are you going to do?” I ask him, pulling my knees up underneath me and resting my hands on my lap. I’m sitting like a toddler in a suit, and Baz would yell at me for it, but I don’t care. Fuck Baz.

Niall turns away from me and stares out toward the Watford Gate and the woods and the drive and the world beyond.

“I’m going to get the fuck out of the World Of Mages.” 

He bites his lip, looks down, and then suddenly places his hand gently on top of mine. It hovers there, soft and warm and very, very careful.

He’s never touched me like this before, and it sends a chill down my spine. He’s never touched me except to push or jostle or nudge.

He turns his head back to me, and his eyes meet mine.

“And I want you to come with me.”

His hand tightens on mine, and I know that he’s talking about something different. A change to our plans. A change to our story.

Even after everything that has happened, I never could have expected this.

I should have. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Everything has been leading to this. The late night talks, the friendship, the plans for our joined future. It’s been him and me throughout this all, but I’ve been so wrapped up in Baz’s world and story that I never realised mine was already happening.

This, right here, is a main event. Baz is nowhere to be seen; there’s no monsters, no plots, no primary action happening off screen.

Just me and my best friend, who is staring at me like I hold the keys to his whole future and waiting for an answer. His brown eyes, his messy hair. I know his face as well as my own. Better, probably.

This is the story I get.

Slowly, carefully, I turn my hand until it’s holding his, our fingers linked, and I squeeze.

“Yeah, alright,” I whisper. “Yeah, let’s try that.”

He smiles, small and happy and shy, and then rests his head against my shoulder.

My pulse is racing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how this story goes. I don’t know what the ending is supposed to be.

Niall squeezes my hand again, and I breathe deep.

I guess I’ll find out.


End file.
